Taking Back Authority of Your Beauty From the Men You’ve Given It Away To // by Stephanie K. Taylor

So here I am with the task of writing about taking authority over beauty. In my last post, I told you guys how I am often still caught in the battle of taking authority over my identity. Just to be completely honest with you readers, I have not always been the most confident woman, and I am still learning to love myself. It’s kind of embarrassing to admit sometimes, but there is so much freedom in owning where I’m at.

Can I be raw with you guys today? Will you allow me to talk about my own struggles in the area of beauty in hopes of helping you with yours? Thank you for allowing me grace. I hope you will do yourself the same favor.

So here’s the truth. At 26, I am relearning to love the person who I see in the mirror. Sometimes, I forget who God says I am and what he says about me. Oftentimes, I would rather run and hide than face the jarring insecurities and lies in my head.

Here’s some more truth. Every time I dated or talked to a guy, (most of whom were the cliche bad boys because apparently that used to be my thing) I inadvertently would place my confidence, my value and my identity in their hands. When things did not work out, I was left shattered, and it negatively affected my self-esteem and my sense of my own beauty.

“I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with loving kindness. I will build you up again and you will be rebuilt.” Jeremiah 31:3

Here’s what I am learning readers: You and I have been given intrinsic value and worth. It is built into our DNA. God drew you and I with loving-kindness. He drew us with care and formed us in our mother’s wombs. He designed you and I on purpose and set each of us apart. He loves you and I with an everlasting love, a love that won’t bend, break or change.

You are good. You are beauty. You are a masterpiece. You are made in the reflection of the Creator of the Universe. He looked at you and said you were perfect. The same goes for me.

So if you and I are going to take authority over beauty, we must first stop placing it in other people’s hands. You and I have to make a choice. Will we believe what God says about who we are or will we allow our idea of our own beauty to shift and change with people’s opinions and their treatment of us? Will we place our perception of whether we are good enough in the hands of someone else or in the eyes of our Father?

A friend of mine said the most sassy and brilliant thing I’ve ever heard. After going through a painful breakup, my usually confident and outspoken friend was feeling the effects taking a toll on her sense of self, but she was digging her way out of the hole of hurt and brokenness. She looked me dead in the eyes one night and said, “I don’t care if a guy is freaking King Tut. Nobody gets to make me feel unbeautiful.”

I loved that! Today, I still hear her words ringing in my head, “I don’t care if he is freaking King Tut.” So I tell myself, “Stephanie, nobody gets to shake your confidence. No one gets to make you feel like you are not good enough.”

Dearest reader, I hope you will come along this ride with me, on the road to really grasp what beauty is. To understand that beauty is something intrinsically built into who your DNA. It is who you are. It is not something another person can take, unless we allow them to.

When we place our sense of worth in another person’s hands, we give them our power. We give away our authority. This authority says God gave us a power to rest and know we are created in his likeness, a power to look in the mirror and call what we see good because He said so, a power to change, bend, mold and grow as we, and only we, see fit.

We’ve got to stop giving our power away. If we want to feel beautiful, to rest and know we are enough, just the way we are, then we have to take authority over this lie that someone else can make or break us, that a relationship defines us. Instead, we must own the God-given beauty we each possess and let nothing, and I mean absolutely nothing, shake it.

Because I don’t care if a guy is freaking King Tut. Nobody gets to make me feel unbeautiful.